Two cameras, one fight: 8 September 1863

Early on 8 September 1863, Union monitors and the ironclad USS New Ironsides stood in to engage Fort Moultrie. Two photographic operations recorded it.

On the parapet of Fort Sumter — a ruin by then, and under fire — George S. Cook set up with James M. Osborn beside him. From Morris Island, across the channel and inside the Federal lines, Haas & Peale photographed the same ships.

The claim, and the counter-claim

The National Park Service says of Cook’s plates that they are what are considered history’s first combat photographs. The Dictionary of Virginia Biography, more carefully, says he was the first to photograph Union ironclad gunboats in action, and adds that his best-known image of an exploding shell was likely the result of significant retouching.

Davis and Melton record the other side of it: the historian Jack Thomson called the Haas & Peale plate of New Ironsides and the monitors firing on Fort Moultrie the first photographic record of naval ships in battle — and then note that the distinction has to be shared, because Osborn was with Cook on Sumter’s parapet the same morning.

What can actually be said

That two cameras recorded the same engagement from opposite shores on the same day is documented from both sides. Which shutter opened first is not, and no evidence this section has seen could settle it.

There is a further difficulty with all superlatives of this kind. “First combat photograph” depends entirely on what counts as combat and what counts as a photograph of it — a distant warship under sail is not a firing line, and a plate retouched afterward is not straightforwardly a record. The safest thing that can be said of 8 September 1863 is also the most interesting: it is the first day in the war when we can watch the same fight from two sides through two cameras.